Fury at 'child exploitation' in North

Children in the North are being paid less than £3 (€4.29) an hour for labouring in the fields, it was revealed today.

Migrant support worker and former MP Bernadette McAliskey said foreign youths aged under 16 were being exploited to produce cheap food after the minimum wage of £2.76 (€3.95) was approved by the Agricultural Wages Board.

Stormont Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew decided to keep the board of trade unionists and farmers earlier this year despite pressure for its abolition.

"It is unacceptable in a modern country to be paying people that amount of money for difficult work," she said.

"The undeclared reality here is that we are taking such children born in other countries and suffering in our fields to keep us in cheap food."

The other age bands are: £5.52 (€7.90) for those aged 22 and over, £4.60 (€6.58) for those aged 18 to 21 and £3.40 (€4.86) for those aged 16 to 17.

Earlier this month MLAs at Stormont voted in favour of a motion calling for the board's abolition against its support from minister Michelle Gildernew.

Made up largely of trade unionists, the unelected and unpaid group was criticised for creating unnecessary bureaucracy and actually keeping salaries above the national minimum wage.

Ms McAliskey added: "When you are talking about young people here you are talking about people who might otherwise be in education or training and instead they are out gathering other people's potatoes for less than £3 an hour."

Agriculture scrutiny committee chairman Willie McCrea from Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists said the Sinn Féin minister had reversed her previous support for abolition, contained in the five Ulster Farmers' Union priorities for reform.

The UFU has hit out at the retention in the past and said the decision to keep an unnecessary layer of red tape within the farming industry, when there was a national minimum wage for all, was a disappointment.